Running for Your Life: Little Look Back at 2016

When it comes to year-end reviews, I’ve seen a few. After all, I’ve been in the news business for five decades. And each publication I’ve worked for has had some version of a year-end review.

This time a little story. Call it Chicken Tikka Christmas.

I’ve been dining at an NYC Midtown food cart – primarily on Sundays when the crowds are thin – for years. But this year, 2016, I’ve finally begun a friendship with my once-a-week chef. He is from Bangladesh, and speaks only a little English. But, by and by, he has ventured into more and more conversation with me: primarily about the weather, once about his daughters and my daughter. We have yet to exchange names, but it hardly seems to matter to either of us.

Last Sunday (Dec. 18), the Chicken Tikka chef went all out. We talked more than usual: I let him know that as a long-distance runner I had huge appetite. So he gave me a meal for two, at a price for one. I told him that I would be taking some of it home to my grateful wife as leftovers. That made him beam from ear to ear.

Later that night, after a long shift at The Post, I was standing on the near-empty subway platform with my briefcase containing my prize – the leftover Chicken Tikka for M. I was in a post-work daze when a man – dressed like Peary en route to the North Pole – came up behind me. He said hello – and within the winter hoodie I saw my friend, the Chicken Tikka chef.

We talked some more, on the platform and in the subway car that wasn’t long in coming. We were both Brooklyn-bound. I told him that I had the meal for my wife tucked away in the briefcase.

His smile vanished. “You didn’t like it?”

“Oh, no, no, no. It was fabulous, as always. Just too much this time. Even for me.”

His smile returning, he nodded in understanding. I told him he had much to teach me. That I would love to be able to cook as he does. That he could teach. I said there were many people I knew who would love to learn the finer points of South Asian cooking.

There was a lot said. But mostly what was said was in body language. The respect and joy that comes from lives crossed in a busy city. A simple lesson for those who feel too often like a stranger on a train.

Next: Running for Your Life: Running in 2017